Alan Marcus

City of Toys (2024, 39mins) combines Alan Marcus’ 2001 interview with legendary filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl with an exploration of centuries of antisemitism.  As she recalls of her iconic 1935 documentary, Triumph of the Will, on the annual Nuremberg Nazi Party Rally almost seventy years later: “I had no ideals.  I only did my duty.  It was a commission I carried out.”  Beyond its notoriety in 20th century history, Nuremberg was also known as one of the toymaking capitals of the world and until the Nazi era many of its major toymakers were Jewish.  Nuremberg still hosts the world’s largest trade toy fair. The film subtly intertwines narratives on Adolf Hitler and Riefenstahl’s representation of the Nazi movement with Nuremberg’s historical bedrock of antisemitism and the role of its Jewish toymakers.  As film historian Robert Rosenstone has written of Marcus’ work, “I would call it a kind of poetic history that may in fact deny the possibility of history at all.”

Madame Donalda (2024, 36mins) is a post-modern operetta documentary comprised of arias and recitatives built around the moment in June 1905 when a 23-year-old Canadian soprano, Pauline Lightstone, from Montreal’s Jewish community, became an international diva. She found herself in the lead role of La bohème at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden opposite the world’s greatest tenor, Enrico Caruso. A steady stream of prominent roles followed in opera houses and music halls across Europe and North America. As a work of creative non-fiction, the film examines different ways of portraying her transformation, aided by Bulgarian soprano, Sofia Dimitrova. Filming was undertaken in Montreal, London and Aberdeen.

The film's title, 216 Beach Walk, Waikiki (2018, 30mins), refers to the former address of author Jack London during his period in Hawaii in 1915-16 when he was stimulating interest in the islands through his writings. By chance, the same location is now the back door of Trump Int’l Hotel Waikiki. In the film, high-rise developments serve as magnified totems for a heavily congested urban environment fuelled by Waikiki’s fabled touristic appeal. The film questions this interpretation of a paradisiacal paradigm in what could otherwise be termed a post-traumatic site, drawing on the creation and toxicity of the Ala Wai Canal as a potent metaphorical comment. This research project received funding from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland. Screening with panel discussion at the University of Hawaii (2018), featured as a video installation in the CONTACT Exhibition at the Honolulu Museum of Art School (2018), and screened at the Jack London conference at the Univ. of Nevada (2018). Invited speaker with screening, Huntington Library (2019).

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‘I lift my lamp beside the golden door’

Emma Lazarus

The New Colossus (2017, 30mins) by Alan Marcus focuses on links between events around 9/11 and the current controversy over the US/Mexican border/wall.  Themes of national trauma, patriotism, anti-immigration and idealism infuse the film and served as the basis for its first screening in the UK and panel discussion at the University of Aberdeen (2017), and in the US before a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations (2018). Screening and Q&A, The Incomers Film Festival, Dumfries (2018). Screening and discussion at the Visible Evidence XXVI conference, USC (2019).

The Forgotten Jew in the City of Youth (2016) 30min research film which explores the hidden history in and around the Bavarian town of Landsberg am Lech on today’s Romantische Strasse, where Hitler was imprisoned and wrote Mein Kampf, and where in 1944 30,000 Jews were brought and incarcerated.  The film's first public screening with discussion was held at UCLA's Leve Center for Jewish Studies (2018).

Near the Palace (2015), 30min research film developed from the painting, Am Palais, by Lyonel Feininger of an urban scene in Weimar.  The film contrasts the cultural setting embodied by Weimar’s legacy of Goethe, Schiller, Bach, Lizst at the Bauhaus School, with a work by the School’s first appointed faculty member, as Master of Form.  The title and dark foreboding of Feininger’s painting becomes a catalyst for investigating what lies Am Palais – ‘near the palace’ – the remains of Buchenwald.  Overlooking the cultural mecca below, the former camp’s hillside location amongst the beech trees, produces a complex commentary on the symbolism inherent in both camp and city. Invited screening, History Department at the University of Hawaii (2018).

Feininger’s Window (2015), 30min research film which draws on a series of photographs held in Harvard’s photographic collection taken by the artist Lyonel Feininger from his apartment window in Berlin in the 1930s shortly before having to leave for America.  The work takes the form of a city symphony film, reconsidering palimpsests set within Berlin’s contemporary urban environment.

The Molo of Venice (2014), 30-minute observational film set in Venice, focusing on the Molo della Piazzetta, the city’s ceremonial entrance.  Two works from the collection of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, CA, Jean Baptiste Corot’s View of Venice: the Piazzetta seen from the Riva degli Schiavoni (1835) and An Extensive View of the Molo (c.1700) by Luca Carlevarijs, serve as the film’s starting point. Screened in Venice (2022).

85 Miles North of the Equator (2013), 30-minute observational film set in Singapore, which utilizes the drawings of Charles Dyce from the 1840s and other visual documentation of the city, recontextualized in terms of contemporary urban developments, aspirational modernist architecture and public interactions. Screening with talk at Brown Univ (2013). 

In the Birch Grove (2012), 30-minute observational film on contemporary sites at Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Birkenau, drawing upon entries in the diary of SS medical doctor Prof. Johann Paul Kremer.  Screenings with talks at Kings College London (2012), Holocaust Memorial Day, Aberdeen (2013), Brown Univ (2013), Portsmouth (2013), Derry, NI (2013), London (2014), Columbia Univ (2015), and the Alan Leve Centre for Jewish Studies at UCLA (2018).

One Hot Day (2011), 30-minute observational film on an historic post-traumatic site, set in contemporary downtown Hiroshima, Japan.  The film examines the redefinition of place at the hypocentre and its transfiguration through public forms of ritualized engagement. Screenings with talks at Hawaii (2014) and Cambridge (2015), and as a video installation at Aberdeen (2015).

One Market Day (2011), 30-minute observational film on an historic post-traumatic site, set in the contemporary Basque village of Guernica.  Themes revealed in Picasso’s iconic work are considered within the present built environment.  Screenings with talks at Liverpool (2011), Aberdeen (2012) and Kharkiv (2023).

The Memorial (2010), 30-minute practice-as-research experimental film presents an observational study of one of the country’s most unique memorials—the New England Holocaust Memorial in downtown Boston. Situated on what is a greened traffic island, the memorial’s six glass towers are adjacent to The Freedom Trail, with a six-lane road on one side and a string of restaurants and bars on the other. These include “America’s oldest restaurant” and “America’s oldest tavern.” Eschewing interviews, narration, and non-diegetic music, the film seeks to pose questions about the symbolic nature of Holocaust memorialization in an American setting and its relationship to Boston’s numerous American Revolution historical sites and memorials along “The Trail.” The Memorial is one of a series of four films that comprise the In Time of Place research project that explores the impact of tourism and the banal on sites of historical stature associated with Jewish identity, the Diaspora, and the Holocaust. Screenings and talk at York (2011) and special screening sponsored by the Experimental Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group at SCMS Boston (2012).

The Cemetery (2010), 30-minute observational film set in the Jewish quarter in Prague, infused by the after presence of Franz Kafka.  Forms part of the  In Time of Place research project. Screening and talk at York (2011) and at the Visible Evidence conference in Stockholm (2013).

The Ghetto (2009), 30-minute practice-as-research film set in Venice, Italy, that looks at ritualized activities by inhabitants and tourists within the built environment of the ancient Jewish quarter in Venice.  In Time of Place research project. Screenings and talks at Cambridge (2009), Liverpool (2010), Dundee (2010), St. Francis, Nova Scotia (2010), Caltech (2011) and Venice (2022). 

In Place of Death (2008), 30-minute observational film that explores issues of absence, touristic encounters and the identity of place in the town of Dachau and its former concentration camp.  In Time of Place research project. Screenings and talks at Cambridge (2008), Derby (2008), Edinburgh (2008), Haifa (2008), Kent (2008), Liverpool (2008), Manchester (2008), Syracuse (2008), Dublin (2009), three events at Cambridge (2010), St Francis, Nova Scotia (2010), St Mary’s, Nova Scotia (2010), Caltech (2011), Krakow (2011), Warsaw (2011), Aberdeen (2013), Hawaii (2014), Aberdeen (2015), Reykjavik (2016) and Cambridge (2022).

Beautiful Dachau (2006), 30-minute video installation practice-as-research, set in the town of Dachau, Germany.  In Time of Place research project. Screenings and talks at Madison (2006), Swansea (2007), Brown (2007), Bryn Mawr (2007), Princeton (2007) and Harvard (2007). 

This anthology co-edited by Alan Marcus and Dietrich Neumann presents a range of interdisciplinary explorations into the urban environment, through film, photography, digital imagery, maps and signage. Contributors examine our fascination with the city through the history of art and architecture, urban studies, environmental studies, cultural geography and screen studies.

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In the early 1950s, a number of Inuit men, women, and children were loaded on ships and sent to live in the cold and barren lands of the Canadian High Arctic. Spurred by government agents' promises of plentiful game, virgin land, and a lifestyle untainted by Western Influences, these "voluntary migrants," who soon numbered nearly ninety, found instead isolation, hunting limited by game preserve regulations, three months of total darkness each winter, and a government suddenly deaf to their pleas to return home. The question, still unresolved forty years later, is whether these "experiments" were a well-intentioned governmental attempt to protect the Inuit way of life or a ploy to lure innocent people to exile, hunger, and deprivation in order to solidify Canada's Cold War sovereignty in the far North.  This book outlines the motives behind the relocation, case histories of two settlements, and the aftermath of the migration. Relocating Eden provides a timely and provocative inquiry into issues of continuing importance to Canada and all native peoples.  Reviews

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